Maya is not as shortcut focused as blender, however maya fundamentally works completely differently so that you dont rely as much on shortcuts.
However i believe you can customise just as much as you can in blender.
I honestly think the biggest dealbreaker for most people is the price. Correct me if anyone disagree
I just love the short cuts in Blender. It makes thanks so much faster.
Yeah true mate.
3D is hard no matter where you start. The learning curve is subjective, but for me it was much easier to go from Cinema4d to Maya than it was from Cinema4d to Blender. I had to relearn a lot of stuff since Blender does things differently than other programs. Which has a lot to do with the UI and the general way Blender works. I feel in terms of interaction with the program, Blender is more minimalist while Maya takes you more by the hand. But i have to add to that. Mayaâs curve appears to me as flatter, but if you go deeper with the program it does get complex and more difficult. I think the beginning is easier. Go deeper down the rabbit hole and every 3D program becomes difficult and it doesnât matter anymore which program you use.
VFX is the short form for visual effects and its a large area. While there are some VFX disciplines where Blender fares well, when it comes to simulating the elements and physics its not that great. The simulation tools have aged and havenât been updated for some time.
But there will be a new system for simulating destruction and a new fluid solver and cloth simulation will get an update too. All of that will make Blender better.
If you are interested in doing complex and serious VFX, you should take a look at Houdini.
You can download a free non-commercial version of it. But be warned, Houdini is considered to be the most difficult 3D program due to its heavy reliance on math, visual scripting and programming.
In the end its just a tool. The program is not the most time consuming thing to learn, its all the fundamentals, which sticks no matter what program you use.
you will find this true very soon, currently you wont find yourself comfortable watching any videos other than blender videos, but eventually you wont care what so ever what program they use to show you something.
Its like comparing a hammer to a screwdriver. On the surface theyâre very different, but in the end theyâre both just tools.
I wonât disagree, but Iâll add licensing to that. Even if you can afford (to subscribe to) as many copies of Maya as you need, thereâs still the issue of having it available everywhere you need it whenever you need it. And you know thereâs some part of the software thatâs actively paranoid about whether it should, in fact, actually be allowing you to run it at any particular moment. In some other products this goes as far as secretly reporting your activity back to the software maker and can result in legal threats and attacks against you and your organization if they decide youâve violated their intellectual property and contractual rights in some way.
With Blender you have none of that. The software is YOURS and âFree to use for any purpose, forever.â as the web site says. Thereâs something just wonderful about downloading the latest version and then running about the house (or your company) installing it on every computer you can find, knowing that not only is it actually impossible to violate the license while doing this, but youâll never run into a failure because something went wrong with some copy-protection and licensing code.
Companies like Autodesk can and do discontinue software, remove it from sale, and stop providing new licenses and perhaps even activations/keys that allow people to continue using software licenses that they thought they had purchased outright. Or they might even go completely out of business, you never know. Blender is completely independent and your continued use of it does not depend on any individual or organization Even if everyone who has ever worked on it dropped dead tomorrow and Amsterdam was struck by a meteor, there are many many copies of the complete Blender source code and build environment distributed around the world (you can have your own too!) which people could pick up and continue developing with. Blender is thus pretty much immortal and unstoppable.
Heck, you canât even buy a permanent license to most Autodesk products these days, but must pay every month in perpetuity in order to keep using what you âboughtâ. And all of the above is before you even consider other license advantages such as being able to look at the source code and change it if you want it, or that there can never be a âBlender LTâ like Mayaâs Lite version that still costs you money but at the same time is actively TRYING to not be as good as the full Maya and has to prevent you getting any benefit you havenât specifically paid for. That seems really sad to me. I think Iâd rather use software where every last little bitty bit of it is doing its best to make me happy and productive.
Hah i did this at my school 
Is there a way to actually see if the software is collecting certain data and sending it to the Internet?
I hate to disagree here but their GPL license is a bit restrictive. If the software was YOURS then why are you forced to legally keep it open source if you modified it and you are using it for comercial pruposes?
Yeah true dat mate, that is why I personally hate corporates and I would rather use FOSS instead.
Even Unity seems to have a much better license and it costs a lot less. And hell if you earn less than 100K then it is free for you which is great. Some corproates actually are fairer than others.
The GPL only requires you to make the source code available to the people you give your modified binaries to. If you never distribute those binaries, you donât have to distribute the source code.
Which therefore means that if the software is YOURS, why is there a legal string attached to it?
I have downloaded Blender source and made changes, compiled it and used it. I donât need to supply those changes to anyone if I choose not to. I can do whatever I want with it.
If I was to sell my version of Blender, I have to give any buyers the source code if they ask, and there isnât anything I can do from them giving it away for free.
If youâre not intending on making money by selling Blender, the legal strings are of no concern to you.
What changes did you make to it?
There are legal strings attached to anything you own.
Not unless if it was released in the public domain.
I got into 3D a very long time ago, specifically 3DS Max⌠Maya always seemed to weird to me but i did use it. I lost interest in Max because of Autodesk. They donât really add much with each new version, at least not for the years I used it. And now they own Maya too.
Max and Maya are cash cows to Autodesk particularly as they are now under subscription based licences (iâm fiercely against this pricing model).
Sure blender has some rough spots & bugs (like cycles not doing caustics) but then so does commercial software costing thousands.
Stick with Blender, it is the better all rounder. 
You are not allowed to copy and sell most products, neither software nor hardware.
You are not even allowed to to do everything with stuff you own if they are not copy right protected because of legal strings attached to them.
I thought Autodesk originally owned those two products.
Yeah I am also against that pricing model as well.
I plan to mate =D
Can you please give me an example?
No, Maya was a competing product created by a rival company. Like Adobe, Autodesk are in the habit of buying and swallowing the competition.
Lets hope no corporate buys Blender
Well, if you own a copy of Sim City you may not copy and sell the copys.
If you own a VW Golf you may not copy its design and sell it as a Joe232 Golf.
If you own an iPhone you may not build an exact copy and sell it.
If you own a car you are not necessarily allowed to drive it.
If you own a gun you are not automatically allowed to shoot it.
If you own an apple you a not necessarily allowed to take a seed from it an plant it because even plants can be patented.
And so on.